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5 Incredibly Useful and Free SEO Tools

SEO sounds simple enough – change your website to fare better on search engines. The simplicity ends there, though. On top of having to learn all the ins and outs of optimization – any of which can become obsolete in a few years – you also have to learn how to implement them. That can double the amount of time you need to get your site up to SEO standards.

Luckily, technology is always there to make tasks less time-consuming, and SEO is no exception. Hundreds of tools are available to speed up or streamline each task, some free, some available for a low price. But how do you know if a tool is the best solution to your problem, or better yet, the best for the job?

Ultimately, choosing the right tool is a matter of trial and error. These five, though, are a great place to start your SEO strategy.

Simply enter a keyword idea into the box, and you’ll get a list of hundreds, maybe thousands, of relevant alternatives. Check throughout the web, or narrow your search to find the best choices for a specific format like video, news or shopping. Instead of brainstorming keywords for hours, visit Ubersuggest and let the site do the work.

Simply enter the URL for any site and this bot will scan all your images. I entered the URL for Maxwell Systems, a construction software company that has many images on their home page.

If you’re only worried about optimizing your website’s text, you’re missing out on a great way to raise your ranking with pictures. With Image SEO, your photos become part of your strategy.

Enter your URL into the box on the home page, and you’ll get a quick analysis of each graphic on your site. It tells you whether the image’s ALT text follows Google guidelines and points out which images have no text at all. It also offers tips on how to make the text more attractive to search engines without appearing too keyword-stuffed or “spammy.”

Yes, the search engine algorithms go through every word and image on your site to set your ranking, but those don’t show up on the results page. The title and meta description do, which is why the title and description optimization tool from SEO Bin is so valuable.

Enter the search term for which you want to optimize your website, as well as the country where you want to appear (remember, not all terms are universal). Check your page title and meta-description, and get tips on how to optimize them for you preferred search term. By the time you’re done, your site will appear when and where it’s supposed to.

When you’re feeling sick, do you try to heal yourself or go to a professional to diagnose the problem? If your website is sputtering along, get a free checkup from Quicksprout.

Fill out the form on the homepage, and get a free report that not only identifies potential problem areas, but also offers quick tips on how to fix them. Just knowing what’s wrong is half the battle, but if you want expert advice throughout the optimization process, you can also buy the complete program and give your website a thorough makeover from top to bottom.

For many web developers, the best SEO tool is the one that does it all. It needs to scan a site, detect potential flaws and offer advice on how to best resolve them. Instead of jumping from one tool to another, the free SEO toolkit from Microsoft lets you do it all from one location.

Install the platform and in a matter of minutes you can start improving your rankings on Google, Bing and other engines. Use the tool to crawl your entire website for issues with keywords, ALT text and other elements. Run detailed reports, and see everything that needs work. Plus, improve your site’s reputation by selecting which pages should be indexed and which shouldn’t.

There are so many aspects to search engine optimization that it can be hard to keep track of them all. With these tools in your arsenal, you’ll manage your way to better rankings.

Pretty good list. However I don't believe on page to be that important considering the amount of bad websites that rank #1 based on like profile. There's a guy who I'm trying to beat he has 30+ pages all with the same titles, description, keywords, alt tags on every page according to screaming frog. Another guy who ranks#2 is single page EMD with all menus sidebar links and footer that points to the main branded site. .. yet somehow ranks

Thanks for the comment Garratt. Onpage is just an essential foundation; without it you have no organizational structure. In regards to your situation, there might be a number of other factors influencing your competitors ranking. Good luck!